The Evolution of Habbo Private Servers
The journey of Habbo Hotel private servers, commonly known as "Habbo retros," began in 2005. This was when 'JoeH' pioneered the first Habbo v1 private server. This was followed by Jeax and Matthew Parlane who successfully replicated Habbo version 7.
Soon after, Habbo retros experienced a surge in popularity. Developers like Nillus, Moogly, mirkan, Donkjam, NGangsta & James joined the community and created private servers for Habbo versions 13 to 18. It was during this time that modifications such as custom furniture, clothes, and hotel-view designs started appearing in Habbo servers, with legendary designers such as 'Tsuka' becoming well-known for their unique designs.
As we moved towards Habbo versions 22 to 28, the introduction of CMSs, advanced emulators, and client customizations marked a new era. Developers like Nillus, maritnmine, vista4life, cecer1, Jordan, Dissi, Meth0d, sisija, and yifan_lu produced popular systems like the Holograph Emulator, HoloCMS, and PHPRetro enabling servers to support hundreds of players simultaneously.
When Adobe announced discontinuing Adobe Shockwave, which powered Habbo, the game's developers shifted towards re-building the game in Adobe Flash. In response, Meth0d initiated a project to adapt retros to the Flash client, creating the Uber Emulator.
Meth0d's ambitious project caught the eye of a new developer in the scene, Aaron 'Sojobo' Marshall, who offered to buy Meth0d's new Uber Emulator. His plans were to re-brand it as Phoenix Emulator and sell it to private server owners. For some time, Phoenix Emulator dominated the scene, with server owners paying Sojobo monthly license fees for use of the Emulator, until an original Uber Emulator code leak by 'MDK' offered alternatives to the community. A few Uber Emulator edits were produced by the community, but many still stayed with using Phoenix Emulator due to it's staibility.
However, in 2013, 'Sojobo' encountered legal issues with Habbo Hotel's parent company, forcing him to stop selling Habbo emulators and developing Habbo retros again. This led many server owners to switch to Uber Emulator edits, such as Butterfly and Plus Emulator. Veterans like Jordan and Dominic Gunn (now employed by Habbo known as Macklebee) re-entered the community, contributing to development up to version 64 of Habbo.
Some new Emulators were released to the community after the downfall of Phoenix which were created in the Java programming language, rather than C# which the community was used to. However, they didn't catch on fast on with server owners, as many had heavily edited Uber, Butterfly & Plus emulators, and didn't see a need to switch.
Eventually, those with older C# emulators were struggling to update to Habbo's latest versions and made the switch to the more updated Java Emulators, particularly Comet and Arcturus Emulator. Development continued well on the Java Emulators for a few years, with Arcturus Emulator taking the lead. Unfortunately Arcturus became abandoned by it's creator, and the community stepped in to take over updating it, which is when the Krews community and Arcturus 'Morningstar' edition was born.
The Krews community quickly rose to prominence, continually updating and providing resources for developers.
Adobe later announced the discontinuation of Adobe Flash, which prompted Billsonnn from Krews to start a project converting the Flash client into HTML5 using PixiJS and TypeScript, now a standard client used by many retro hotels.
Looking forward, the Krews community stands poised to remain at the forefront of Habbo Hotel development, embracing changes and driving innovation.